A legal expert told ZDNet that if the Digital Economy bill, proposed by the government last week, passes in its present form then the problem for hotspot providers could get worse, because under its rules the owner of the copyrighted material would simply target the internet address of the hotspot and look no further. In this case, that would be the pub.

My latest book co-authored with Anna Gatti is now available as an e-book for an introductory price of $4.99 USD(298 pages). If you are interested, just send me an email at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com and we can process the payment via paypal

Open Mobile: Understanding the Impact of Open Mobile – Implications for Telecoms/Devices, Web, Social Networks, Media and Personal Privacy took two years to write!

The idea for this book first arose when I spoke at Stanford University in late 2006 and met Anna through a mutual friend, Dr Adam Tolnay.

The book took more than two years to write .. And with good reason.

In that timeframe, much of the closed ecosystem we once took for granted has now been transformed by the Open Mobile mindset. And recent events indicate that there is now no turning back…

We also explored the topic of Open Mobile from multiple perspectives (Telecoms, Content, Web, Social Networking and Privacy). In that sense, this book attempts to present a Neutral

Point of View.

Thus, this book has been written against a backdrop of rapid change and we view it as ‘perpetual beta’.

This book explores the interplay between the world of the Internet and the world of mobility. The Internet world is regarded as being ‘Open’; however, as we shall see, ‘Open’ can be

interpreted differently depending on constituency. The mobile world is supposed to be ‘Closed’. Thus, the interaction between the Internet and mobile worlds extends beyond technology – and into the realm of philosophy (Open vs. Closed). Driven by customers and under the influence of the Internet, it is inevitable that the closed mobile ecosystem is now ‘Opening up’. We call this phenomenon ‘Open Mobile’.

This book explores the three drivers of Open Mobile:

● the Internet

● social networking and

● the creation of content (also called Web 2.0)

We also consider the five perspectives of Open Mobile:

● the Internet/Web

● telecoms/devices

● content

● social networking and

● privacy

We then extrapolate the current and future impact of Open Mobile in terms of:

● services

● business models

● Cloud computing and

● The Internet of Things

In the Web model, the money is in the links and not the nodes. The Open ecosystem fits well into that paradigm by enabling the creation of new links – between people, objects and content. The mobile future, when it manifests itself fully, is bright. However, getting to that future will mean a transformation of industries and economies. We accept that different constituencies react differently to the word ‘Open’, hence, the need to explore the topic of Open Mobile from five different perspectives. These perspectives are not aligned in their meaning and adoption of ‘Open’.

However, by choosing to address Open Mobile from the perspective of different players in the ecosystem, we provide a unique (and sometimes contradictory!) insight into a rapidly changing environment. This holistic approach adds value since it gives insights into the strategies and goals of other players – many of whom may not be from your industry.

It takes a lot of thinking and ‘putting yourselves in other people’s shoes’ i.e. an NPOV(Neutral point of view) perspective and then to also capture the evoltion of these principles(trends) and the ethos of open collaboration (i.e. the impact on society of all these

changes). Plus we wanted to make it very readable!

Anna and I had the scope and breadth of knowledge – and yet it pushed our limits and took a long time to write!

We hope you enjoy reading it.

You can buy the e-book version for an introductory price of $4.99 USD. If you are interested, just send me an email at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com and we can process the payment via paypal

About the Authors

Ajit Jaokar

Ajit Jaokar is the founder of the London based publishing and research company futuretext focussed on emerging Web and Mobile. His thinking is widely followed in the industry and his blog, the OpenGardensBlog, which was recently rated a top 20 wireless blog worldwide. In 2009 – 2010, Ajit was nominated as part of the Global Agenda Council on the Future of the Internet by the world economic forum. He hopes to use this opportunity to further extend the pragmatic viewpoint of the evolution of Telecoms networks in an open ecosystem.

His consulting activities include working with companies to define value propositions across the device, network, Web and Social networking stack spanning both technology and strategy. He has worked with a range of commercial and government organizations globally including The European Union, Telecoms Operators, Device manufacturers, social networking companies and security companies in various strategic and visionary roles.

Anna Gatti is the Head of International Online Sales and Operations for YouTube. She is independent board member of the leading mobile media company Buongiorno (Italy, MTA STAR: BNG). Before joining Google, Anna was partner of the venture capital fund myQube, and advisor to major telecommunication companies. Anna has completed a PhD in Criminology, a PhD in Business Administration and Management, and a post doctoral program in organizational theories at Stanford University. When she is not traveling, Anna lives in Palo Alto, California.

About the Editor

Peggy Anne Salz is the founder and publisher of MsearchGroove (MSG), an online source of analysis and commentary on mobile search, mobile advertising, social media and all things digital at the intersection of content and context. Her report, Mobile Search & Content Discovery–the first of its kind–establishes Peggy as an authority on mobile search and content discovery technologies enabling media companies and mobile operators to monetize content and services.

As a committed independent thinker and free agent, Peggy has established a successful consulting career based on vision, insight, versatility, and over 15 years of industry experience. She has written over 300 articles and also comments on daily developments in mobile search and mobile advertising for magazines and online destinations such as MobiAd News, Mobile Entertainment, Mobile Media, and New Media Age. Peggy also writes Agile Minds, a monthly column for eContent magazine documenting the breakthrough technologies and companies that

will influence the nextgeneration Internet, widely referred to as Web 2.0.

Peggy’s drive to spark debate about issues impacting the mobile industry at all levels has won her international recognition as a brave new voice in the mobile content market. Her speaking

calendar includes engagements at mobile search and mobile advertising conferences worldwide. Graduating with honors from the University of Pittsburgh, Peggy earned a B.A. in Philosophy of Science, Political Science, and Economics. She is a Fulbright fellow and a member of the International Who’s Who of Professionals.

Email: peggy at msearchgroove.com

You can buy the e-book version for an introductory price of $4.99 USD. If you are interested, just send me an email at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com and we can process the payment via paypal

Read the following section in his blog .. Firstly, the entire episode is unprecedented and secondly it causes deep concern to doing any business in Italy ..

Why? Well, Italy has a legal concept which is unknown in Anglo-Saxon countries: namely, that an employee of a company can be held personally criminally liable for the actions or non-actions of the corporation he works for. Moreover, Italy has also criminalized much of its data protection laws, meaning that routine data protection questions can give rise to criminal prosecutions. As everyone in the field of privacy knows, data protection laws are full of sweeping statements that need to be interpreted with judgment and common sense. But imagine the consequences if every data protection decision made by a company can be second-guessed by a public prosecutor with little knowledge of privacy law. Does that mean that a data protection lawyer working for a company is running the risk of personal criminal arrest and indictment and prosecution for routine business practices?

This cannot be good for Italy as a whole .. and I wonder what message it send to people wanting to do business in Italy

Lots of interesting awards including MPA in Innovation, MPA in Marketing, MPA in Entertainment, MPA in User Experience, MPA in Social Change, MPA in Female Entrepreneurship and others. Participation to these awards is free and open to any startup with a mobile angle.

This is a paper I am working on ..if anyone has any insights or wants to contribute to the interview, happy to speak (ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com). This is a very complex topic due to multiple areas it affects. So good fun to work with

Introduction

Machine to machine(M2M) communications and sensor networks have been on the research agenda for many years, but today Smart Grids provide a new impetus to M2M and a ‘killer application’ to make M2M commercially feasible. A smart grid starts with a ‘Smart electricity meter’ which is capable of two way communications and lets the user and provider manage electricity consumption in a more granular way. If the customer’s power consumption can be captured in a granular manner, the provider can manage the creation, consumption and distribution of Electricity throughout the value chain. The added potential of Smart grids arises from knowing data trends and also extend power management to other devices. Thus, Smart grids are ‘smart’ because of their near ‘real time’ potential to manage energy usage by recording data consumptions in intervals as low as half hourly readings. .

Approach

Smart Grids are an emerging topic of study and research. They are complex since their study spans multiple domains which are converging – for instance Energy (Utilities), Telecommunications, Web services among others. This study/paper is concerned with the Privacy implications of Smart Grids. We start with discussing the conceptual framework of Smart Grids created by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) . We then discuss identify some of the initial privacy problems which are identified as a part of the NIST study. Based on this initial framework, we look back at research in various related domains and extrapolate the issues discussed in those domains to the problems of Smart Grids and Privacy. These areas include – Ubiquitous computing(Technologies like RFID, Mobile networks, Sensor networks, Context aware systems, Pervasive Sensor Networks, Mobile Ad-Hoc networks); Privacy (Trust, Reputation, Distributed trust models, Privacy management frameworks, Revocation, Anonymity and Pseudo anonymity, Authentication, Leakage of Personally Identifiable Information, Transparency, Youth and Privacy, Risk models), Social Networking, Semantic Web, Web 2.0, Peer to Peer computing and others.

The objective of this paper is to learn from other domains and to apply those learnings to Privacy and Smart Grids. In doing so, we can bring new insights to existing Smart grid Privacy issues but we could also identify new areas for Privacy and Smart Grids. The study is also based on actual interviews conducted with professionals in this space.

If you are doing similar work, or are interested in knowing more, please email me at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com

I was trying to read an artice on wired .. It is practically unreadable because it waits for ‘Brightcove’. This is very painful .. and I notice similar experiecnce from Linkedin as well i.e. the ad does not even display .. it simply waits .. (so therefore the ad takes FAR longer to play out) .. Is this common? Note this is not about the ad itself .. but rather that these servers seem to have a longer delay thereby making the ad(if you can call it that since it does not even show!) longer. Anyone else seeing this?

There have been recessions before – but not a 45% drop in rate of deforestation. The difference now is – newspapers are dying

I wonder if anyone is investigating the green effects of the death of the newspaper industry? i.e. it would be interesting to see if a 45% drop in the rate of Amazon deforestation is related to the death of the newspaper industry ..